San Francisco Day 1

For my summer camp job, I had to attend a 2-day in-person training. There were 2 places on the east coast to choose from and San Francisco. SF is 2,841 mi (about 42 hours drive) away [Map to SF]. Lake Forest, IL was an option (840 mi: about 14 hours drive) [Map to LF]. And the last option was South Orange, NJ (515 mi: about 8.5 hours drive) [Map to SO]. Since I've never been to SF before and have heard so much about it, I promptly decided that I should go earlier and stay later than the training so I could really explore the city. I wasn't going to drive to any of those places anyway and the flights turned out to be around the same price. Luckily my friend Ceara lives there and so I was able to stay at her place (in SF) and Dan's place (in Palo Alto - 1 hr away).

I left for San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon. I was feeling uneasily excited. This was strange to me because this year I have been moving around / traveling a lot: NC to GA to France to GA to NC to GA to NC to GA to NC. I think the uneasy feeling came from the fact that I was going to be exploring the city by myself. I really like having a person to go with that plans out where to go and then I feel free to just enjoy the sites. But then again...some of my best trips have been me just wandering around the city. There were a few time when I was in Spain that everyone wanted to go out to the bars and I just got out my map and started walking. Maybe the main reason I was feeling uneasy was because I had forgotten to get Ceara's number and didn't know where I'd be staying that night if I didn't get in touch with her. An hour before I went to the plane, I frantically got online to find either her or Dan's number. I was quite ecstatic when Dan responded the instant I messaged him.

When I got on the plane, I was really tired and practically fell asleep as I took my seat. When I woke up, we were 20 minutes away from landing in Phoenix. When I looked out of the window, my eyes delighted in the view. The land looked like wet raisin skin...except it was completely dry. It was very strange though; there were really flat parts and all of the sudden there were mountains.

After I had marveled for a while, I saw the guy next to me was drawing. I thought to myself, "Self, it seems like he is drawing in Industrial Design style. You should ask him if he works in ID." He did and he designs motorcycle wheels! I only got to talk with him for 5 minutes or so but he gave me his business card. :-D

On the connecting flight to Oakland, I sat next to a rising sophomore from UA, Tony. We ended up playing Smash Bros on his computer haha - he played with the keyboard and I used his controller.

When I arrived, Ceara picked me up and we went to Palo Alto (where Dan lives). On the way, we got some nice Thai food! It was great, but it just reminded me of how much I miss Keaw's cooking!